Globalised climate precarity: Environmental degradation, disasters and the international brick trade

Parsons, Laurie; de Campos, Ricardo Safra; Moncaster, Alice; Cook, Ian; Siddiqui, Tasneem; Abenyake, Chethika; Buddha Jayasinghe, Amila; Mishra, Pratik; Scungio, Luis; Long, Ly Vouch; Billah, Tamim

Abstract

Climate-linked disasters result when natural hazards meet socioeconomic precarity. Recognizing this, scholarship in recent years has emphasized how the precarity that turns climate-linked hazards into disasters is produced within the same global political economy that enables climate change. Nevertheless, despite growing interest in the ways in which the dynamics of global economic history shapes contemporary hazard vulnerability, less attention has been directed toward the dynamism of the contemporary global economy and particularly the ways in which global material flows shape environmental risk. From this standpoint, this article argues, first, the need to account for the economic dynamics of global trade in shaping the factors that intensify disaster risk, and second, the role of multiscalar agency. Exemplifying this issue through a case study of international brick imports from South Asia to the United Kingdom, the article provides a heuristic example of how contemporary globalized flows of goods link local vulnerabilities to economic processes originating thousands of miles away. In an increasingly globalized world, it thus foregrounds a dynamic, global perspective on the genus of climate precarity.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 24, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jan 22, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 15, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 12, 2024
• Journal: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Print ISSN: 2469-4452
• Electronic ISSN: 2469-4460
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 114
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 520-535
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2023.2280666
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11615380